


Even Cloaks Make Mistakes

by Rosae



Series: Frostironstrange Works [1]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avenger Loki (Marvel), Body Dysphoria, Good Loki (Marvel), Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Insecure Loki (Marvel), Insecurity, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, M/M, Multi, Other, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-14 22:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15399138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosae/pseuds/Rosae
Summary: Of all the things that had tried to break Loki over the years, from Thanos to his own father, Loki had never expected a damn cloak to be the one thing that succeeded. Didn't make it hurt any less though.





	Even Cloaks Make Mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> Loki is a part of the avengers team and was mind controlled by Thanos during the attack on New York in this fic.   
> No beta.

The cloak didn’t like Loki. It’d made it quite clear from the start that it wasn’t fond of him, pushing him away from Stephen until he scolded it. Or it if wasn’t pushing him, it was wrapping itself so tightly around Stephen that Loki couldn’t get close anyways. When Tony became involved in their relationship it only got worse, with the cloak readily accepting and welcoming Tony while doing everything in it’s power to keep Loki away from both his boyfriends. 

Loki had faced a lot of rejection in his life, but somehow this hurt more then the man he believed to be his father ordering his mouth sewn shut. Maybe it was that the cloak liked Tony so much, or maybe it was that he knew the cloak’s only purpose was to protect Stephen. 

Maybe it was that he was already so unsure of himself that this just offered him all the proof he needed that he wasn’t good for Tony or Stephen. That he was too broke to be anything else but a toxic drain in their lives. 

He tried to put it out of his mind, tried to not think about it and trouble his lovers with such silly things, but it was hard when the cloak was such a constant in Stephen’s life. It was fine though, he could handle it. It was just a silly cloak being overprotective (it wasn’t. it was right to try and force him out. god he shouldn’t have ever come here). 

Everything was okay, until he’d already had a bad day, he’d had another fight with Thor, he was bruised and battered from the day’s fight and it had taken most of his reserves to repair the damage that Doctor Doom had caused that day. Between that, dealing with SHIELD all of the day before (they were still unconvinced that he had been under mind control during the attack at New York and his meetings with them usually resulted in about two hours of being yelled at, shamed, and being told he was a liar until he wasn’t sure what the truth was anymore) and the fact he’d been unable to sleep for the past two weeks due to his lovers being gone and nightmares of his time with Thanos plaguing him. His body hurt, his mind hurt, his damn soul hurt. Everytime he looked in the mirror he wanted to rip his own eyes out for fear of what he saw reflected back.

All Loki had wanted was to curl up on the couch with his two lovers and watch terrible TV, and he’d been about to do just that. The two of them were already on the coach, the TV playing some show that he didn’t care about and Stephen sitting against one arm rest and Tony snuggled into his side. There was a bowl of popcorn between them and it was a sight that warmed Loki’s heart. That warmth plunged into an icy cold when he attempted to step into the room only to find himself unable to. The blasted cloak had blocked the bottom half of the doorway, stopping him from entering. Normally he would have just called out to Stephen to order the fabric away, but he was already in such a bad mood that he pulled at his magic intending to push the thing away. 

The cloak clearly sensed what he was about to do, since it quickly reached out and snagged one of his wrists, disrupting the magic before he could fully form it. Again, normally such a thing would have been an annoyance at best, but Loki was hurt and tired. His magic was nearly gone and what little he did have left was reactive and hard for him to keep under control as it was a very instinctive part of him. So when the magic was disrupted, it didn’t just fade as it should’ve and instead much like his current line of thinking it reflected inwards causing a fair bit of pain as it did so. Pain mattered little to Loki, but the magic didn’t stop there, it pierced the one spell he still had left running, the one spell he always had running. The cloak had released him as soon as it had grabbed him, clearly not having intended for this to happen, but it was too late.

He could feel it as it happened. As his body shifted against his will. As horns grew in and his skin grew cold and he became the monster he was on the inside. It didn’t make it hurt any less when he looked up at the mirror hung in the hallway to see red eyes surrounded by light blue skin staring back at him. Looking back into the room the scene of Stephen and Tony curled up together no longer invited him in, instead it showed him a perfection he knew that he would only ruin. Had already tainted by merely existing near them. Distantly he could feel the cloak as it hesitantly tried to touch his wrist again, perhaps curious or perhaps trying to comfort but it was far too little far too late.

Loki was down the hallway, thankful only that he was able to move silently so that his lovers wouldn’t see him in such a state. He was half teleportation half running at this point, loosing himself in the maze that made up the Avenger’s Compound. He wasn’t sure where he was going, all he knew was that he had to get away before he ruined what Tony and Stephen had. Finally, in some dark, unused part of the compound, some storage room that hadn’t been needed in ages, his magic and feet gave out and he could move no more. All he could do was curl up in the corner and shake. He couldn’t even cry, Frost giants had no tear ducts. What need would a monster have for tears?

Everything was hitting at once, all his failures, all the torture he had sustained, all the mistakes he couldn’t make up for. It wasn’t real, but he could feel the chains on his arms and the iron thread through his lips digging in and digging in and he had to get it out had to get it out had to get it out can’t can’t can’t can’t. Water was filling up his mouth and now he was drowning again, fighting desperately for air that would never come. With his magic gone and something sharp digging into him, with water filling up his lungs he knew this was it.

Then something was forcing him forward and pulling the sharp things away from him. He coughed and hacked, noticing belatedly that what had been filling his mouth had been blood, not water. It took a long time, of him sitting there and just breathing to notice what exactly had pulled him out from the panic attack. The cloak was wrapped around his hands, holding tightly to them. Oh.

Instantly he was pressed back against the corner, trying to jerk his hands out of the confines of the cloak that now felt far too much like cuffs. It took him a moment to realize he was speaking in desperate tones.

“Please no, stop, I can’t, I can’t, I’m leaving him alone I promise. I won’t ruin them, I won’t, I can’t. Please. I can’t.” 

The cloak seemed unsure, carefully releasing his hands, and he pulled his hands (claws, violent things, bloody, whose blood was that?) back, huddling them against himself as best he could. Trying to shrink back into the corner wasn’t working so Loki just shut his eyes tightly and prayed to anything that would listen that the cloak would either leave or kill him. It’d be a fitting death, Loki, who’d survived every attempt on his life only to fall to a enchanted piece of fabric.

It seemed the cloak had other ideas though, slowly, so very slowly it moved to cover him. At first Loki thought it was trying to strangle him, but it steered clear of his neck. After what felt like an eternity, his breathing began to slow as the fight drained from him. Everything hurt and he was too damn tired. All he wanted to do was sleep even as he fought his closing eyes for fear of the nightmares he knew would come. The cloak seemed to be becoming distressed, probably had something to do with the blood he could feel running down his face. His eyes just wouldn’t stay open though, and the blackness was taking over even as the cloak was clearly trying to rouse him.

In the end, it was Natasha who found him. Or, Natasha was closest to him and was drug through the halls by the cloak when it was unable to move him. From there it had been a flurry of trying to first identity Loki as Loki given the new form and then trying to get him stabilized. His injuries from the battle were quite a bit more serve then he had been letting on, and his claws had done some pretty deep damage to his face and neck. Stephen and Tony had been nervous wrecks, neither of them understood what had triggered the attack particularly to such a serve degree. Though given how protective of Loki the cloak had near instantly become, Stephen had a pretty good guess. 

Speaking of the cloak, during the entirety of his stay in the medical wing the cloak had stayed covering him. The only time it had left was to bar others from the room, namely Thor had been completely unable to enter even with both Stephen and Tony trying to control the cloak, and Fury had taken one look at the cloak as it reared up off the bed as he stood at the doorway and thought better of bothering Loki. 

It was a week before Loki woke up, his magic having spent itself healing him first before it began to build up again. The frost giant form didn’t vanish though as it had the one time Thor could recall him losing his glamour. From what Stephen had been able to determine, it appeared that the glamour had been completely shattered instead of merely slipping. Rebuilding it would take time and work and neither he nor Tony knew how Loki would react to that news. 

The two of them were still reeling from the change in form. They had both known that Loki was a frost giant, it was something that Thor had mentioned, but they had just assumed that like Asgardians, frost giants looked mostly human. Loki always ran cold and didn’t like hot places and they had thought that the end of it. Now they’d discovered that their lover had been hiding his real form the entire time, quite possibly to his own detriment from what Stephen had found.

On day eight, Loki roused. Tony was working on his tablet which was dropped to the ground the moment he saw Loki’s eyes open. He and Stephen both were moving before they could think, up out of the chairs so they could each grab ahold of one of his hands. The cloak moved too so they could, but remained snuggled into Loki over the blankets. It took Loki a moment to register first where he was and then what had happened. 

There was a silence in the room. Nobody knew quite what to say.

“I’m sorry.” It was the only thing Loki could think to say, already regretting the words because tears were welling up in Tony’s eyes and god he had been awake two minutes and he’d already ruined things. Grief and pain really were ll he had to offer them. Then Tony was hugging him, holding him tightly and firmly and Stephen was speaking.

“Loki… You owe us no apology. You are owed so many by so many people, myself included. The cloak had been behaving unkindly to you for quite some time and I enabled that. I let something within my control force you out of our relationship in an awful manner. Though I believe the cloak has already realized it’s mistake, I still am sorry I did not take action sooner. I will not allow it to happen again in the future.”

Loki wanted to explain, to tell Stephen the cloak had been right. That it hadn’t been the cloak at all, that it had been everything else, but Tony spoke first.

“It’s more then that though, we didn’t notice how much you were going through. Fury’s been told under not uncertain terms he’s not allowed to have anyone from SHIELD speak to you unless one of us is there. Thor’s also been banned from your room by the cloak so I assume there’s a conversation we’re going to need to have there. And…” a pause, Tony was considering his words very carefully. Tony seemed to reach a decision, looking Loki in the (red, monstrous) eyes. 

“Loki, Stephen said you’d be hurting yourself by forcing your body to take on a form that’s not it’s own. And while you were out, you talked in your sleep a lot. There was a lot screaming and I tried really hard not to listen but it was hard. I don’t want to pry, I know you need your secrets from us, but please babe… What happened?”

A pause. It would be so easy to lie. To tell them a pretty lie instead of the ugly, awful truth. But. Loki had promised them his honesty, it was the only promise he hadn’t broken and he didn’t want to start now.

“It’s a long story. It’s not a good one either.” A warning. A question. A plea. 

“We have all the time we need.” It was Stephen who replied this time as Tony squeezed him and the cloak wrapped itself around him more firmly.

And so Loki told them. About everything, from his father’s punishments for such simple crimes, to his discovery of his true heritage, to Thanos. Telling them didn’t magically make everything better, he was still shattered, exhausted and aching, but by the end of telling them he felt as if a weight had come off his shoulders. 

Things got better after that. Slowly but surely, there was a therapist, more communication, and though Loki restored his glamour the moment he had the energy too, he slowly but surely worked at letting it down from time to time. It was all baby steps, but he had two wonderful people there to support him the whole way, and one newly protective cloak.


End file.
